Whyte Winter Series R3 January 24th 2010

Last Sunday was the 3rd round of the ever popular Whyte Winter Series in Thetford Forest. This round was based at Mayday Meadow. Following the recent snow and rain, I was expecting the course to be a 6.5 mile slog - but what a surprise! It was mainly dry and fast, with only 100 yards of the boggy black route being included. Before the race, I spotted that the Orange Monkey team was fielding it's strongest riders for this round - Chris Andrews, Paul Beales and Ben Roff were all down to race. As I am going to be racing Chris and Paul in Elite this season, the race was to be a good judge of how well my winter training has been going.

The start was a fast, 1 mile, fire road blast. A lead group quickly formed, made up of 5 or 6 riders. With everyone doing turns on the front, the pace was high. The final climb up to the arena was a bumpy piece of trail, and I darted to the front to dictate the pace as we climbed back up. By lap 2, the group had shrunk to 3 riders - Ben, Chris and myself. This is how it stayed, with us all trying not to get dropped in the heavy traffic, until half way round lap 4, when we got stuck behind a particularly slow backmarker. I saw the opportunity to pull away, managed to sneak past the slower rider and put in a big effort to pull out a 1 minute lead on Chris and Ben by the end of lap 4. I continued to attack on lap 5 and in the end won by nearly 4 minutes.

I am very happy with this result, as it is the firts time I have raced other elite riders this year and I came out on top. Now let's get back to the Davina DVD and keep on training - R1 of the NPS isn't that far away....

George Budd